Expectations and Perceptions

It is a topic I had been pondering recently, but I have to credit Ivy for really pushing me into writing it now, with her post at Home Ec-101 about “Do Not Let Your Sons Be Victims of Learned Incompetence.”  It was a comment that I find quite funny.  Why?  Well, I guess it is because I, and it seems most of the Daddy Bloggers I read break many of the stereotypes that are often associated with husbands.    I won’t speak for others, so I will just cover myself.  I cook, I share in the cleaning at home (we each have designated rooms), I can do laundry, I would load the dishwasher, but I AM the dishwasher in our home, so it is really not applicable.

But that is not really my point (I don’t think).  There are times I wish I could see what TheWife would blog about (assuming she was under the thought that I was not reading her blog).  I would love to see the “other side” once in a while. 

There was a piece about “fair” journalism recently (though I can’t remember for the life of me where), talking about how, you could almost spot the most unbiased political articles, simply by seeing who is criticizing it.  The most fair articles will claim “bias” on behalf of the other side.  And, I believe to some extent that is true in our day to day lives.  Which is why I found Ivy’s article both interesting and amusing.  

In comments, I shared a couple of little little story from my home life.  My father would always “try” to load the dishwasher, but it was never quite up to my mother’s satisfaction.  She would always have to “restack” the dishwasher.  In my own life, if I don’t vacuum the living room carpet in the style and fashion that my wife prescribes, she doesn’t consider it done.  So, I vacuum, she then re-vacuums.  So, I have admittedly said on several that I wasn’t going to bother any longer.  (Granted it is a veil threat, but that is not the point either).  So, here you read how I am not going to bother because she is being a pain about it, whereas if TheWife had a blog, I could read about how she wishes I could just learn how to use a vacuum properly.  

Another one in our house is, I am always asking TheWife where things are.  In her virtual world blog, I can see the complaints of how I am so forgetful, and I never know where anything is, or even better, how I never put anything where it belongs.  Here I would be complaining how she always moves things or puts things is illogical places so I can never find anything.  In the end they are the same scenarios, but two totally different points of view.

Of course, there is one other factor that I would be remiss if I didn’t add on to this, and that is about expectations.  (And again, these vary from home to home, so I am just going to use some oversimplified stereotypes, just for the sake of examples.)  Men have (or had) certain expectations I guess of women, such as the “Hey Hon, what’s for dinner?”  (Again, doesn’t apply here since I do at least 1/2 of the cooking).  Or heaven forbid a man ever picks up a rag and dusts something (except perhaps the television screen before a big game).  And the woman will complain about such things, but never actually ask him to do such tasks.  The other side holds true with expectations as well.  A woman that can juggle 36 tasks around the house, cook dinner, and bake for the PTA, somehow can’t figure out how to put some oil on a squeeky hinge.  The chances of them actually taking out the garbage is also near ‘nil.  These aren’t tasks that the other “can’t” do, but things that are… well… expected (for right or wrong) from the other person.

So what’s my point?  When you are frustrated with your spouse/partner in such situations, stop for a minute and look at it from the other side.  Believe it or not, they probabaly are doing just as much as you, but you believe you are getting the worse end of the deal, and that more is expected of you.  And if that isn’t enough, then talk about it.  Like Ivy who finally got her son to load the dishwasher.  The situation can be fixed with a little communication.  If you spouse wrote a blog that they thought you weren’t reading, what would they write/complain about that you do?

Pumpkin Pancakes

Since somebody chastised me on Twitter (Hi Sara) for mentioning these without giving the recipe, and I been stalling on posting because I really wanted to move away from political posting, I figured I would share what is our typical Sunday Morning breakfast in the Autumn, Pumpkin Pancakes.  

Ingredients.

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 1 tbsp butter (melted)
• 1 cup nonfat milk
• 1/3 cup pure pumpkin

I’m a parent too

Trade shows for the year are done, as are (hopefully) business trips.  So other than a new podcast we (”we” being myself along with the unflappable BusyMom) are trying to launch (but more on that soon), life should allow me to get back to blogging on a regular basis again.  I hope.   I don’t know if it is because I haven’t had much opportunity to blog lately or not, but I have been storing up one rant or another, and it seems like all my topics are leaning this way.  I hoped to start out a bit more mild mannered, but decided, if I did that I might not ever get back to it… so my apologies, but here we go with rant one in the series.Over at Career and Kids, there was an interesting little bit on Does Your Husband “Baby-Sit”?  This is one of those things that is a sore subject for me… from a variety of angles.  On one hand, sometimes I think this gets a bit overblown. Even in the comments, several women complained that men should not refer to it a “baby-sitting” when it comes to their own kids.  Really more than anything,  it is just a difference in choice of words.   Blame it on sexist games or “being manly men” or whatever, I know dads that while every bit as happy to be with their kids as anybody else, but when they are talking to their “buddies” use phrases like “being stuck baby-sitting.”  It has nothing to do with “expectations of their wife” or how they feel about their kids.  Turn it around, and even if they would really prefer to be out shopping with their friends, but he is on a business trip, she would NEVER say she was “stuck baby-sitting” to her friends (even if this is how she felt), because of appearances.  After all “what kind of mother would say that?”Yes, there are exceptions to all of these scenarios. There are fathers that treat their wives like they are slaves, and the kids are nothing but critters under foot that the wife is supposed to deal with, and keep in their place because he had a hard day at work.  But they are exceptions, these are outdated 1950’s versions of cavemen (or Republicans).  And these clods wouldn’t “baby-sit” anyway (at least not without a fight), so really the complaint is about bad wording.  On the other side of this coin, do you ever wonder why some of these issues continue to come up?  Look around, read some blogs and really pay attention to what is being said.  Look at advertising, and even (I may have mentioned this once before), look at medias portrayals of men as parents.  Take a look at any “parenting” magazine.  Count how many ads you see that aren’t specifically targeted towards women (you won’t need more than one hand, and will probabaly have a finger or three to spare).  The argument will most likely be, “but men don’t read these magazine.”  And that is probably true, but why?  The articles are writen to, for and about women.  The ads are selling directly to (and exclusively to) women.  So why would a man read it?Take in a sermon (or speech) from to biggest (or at least loudest) voices of the “moral majority” and you head how men are not men any more.  How women are supposed to stay home to take care of the children.  While they treat this more like the previously mentioned silly outdated theories of the men “make the money,” the other not talked about side of it, is that obviously these people don’t think (and in some cases they may be right) that these men are fully capable to be a full time parent. Read a few Mommy Blogs long enough and you will see how women are “amazed” at how well things went when she went on a trip, or how she doesn’t trust him to check their homework, or get them to soccer practice, and so on.  They love their husbands (I presume), but yet they trust them with nothing, allow them to do nothing, in many cases don’t bother to tell them anything, but then don’t understand why he is disconnected with “everything going on.”My final (and admittedly a bit silly, but it is worth the point I hope to make) complaint is how father’s are portrayed in movies, media, etc.  Funny, how so many women complain and hate “pricess” things because of all the supposed negative stereotypes (that is a whole other rant for another day), but let us look for a second at the dads.  Cinderella’s father couldn’t raise his daughter alone, so he chose to marry (granted poorly) so that his daughter would have a proper mother.  Staying in Cinderella you have the crazy king, insistent on getting his son married.  ”Crazy Old” Maurice trying to raise Belle.  Bambi basically learned it all on his own out in the wild because his mother died.  While he eventually catches on, the humor in Mr. Mom is how inept Jack is at taking care of his kids when his wife goes off to work.  Daddy Daycare also shows that men have “no clue” how hard it is to raise children.I am a parent too.  I care just as much, and do just as much for my daughter as my wife.  And do so happily.  If you don’t like the wording on how I describe it, change the stereotypes.  Don’t make me look either “whipped” or “freaky” for wanting to do so.  But until that changes, don’t harp on me for how I choose to describe it either*.(*Disclaimer: I haven’t ever used the phrase “baby-sitting” to describe spending time with my daughter… but I am trying to make a point). 

Exploding Patio Sets?

OK, not really… but now that I have your attention, let me tell you what happened this past weekend. It was Saturday, a relatively warm, cloudy day here in New Jersey. Like every Saturday for the past few months, my routine was the same, I would go out on my back deck, enjoy a cup of coffee and my morning cigarette (yes, I know… don’t go there), the dogs run around the yard, and then I get ready and head off to the gym. So like every other Saturday morning, I knew exactly what the condition of the yard was (mostly I note whether I will be mowing or doing yard work that day). Nothing was particularly amiss or out of the usual.

As I was coming home, TheWife calls me and says the our patio set is “broken” (I really must speak to her about her ability to understate a situation). I arrived home to find that the tempered glass top of our patio set had shattered into nothing but a chards of glass. I mean tiny. The pieces were so small that you could fit two or three of them on a dime. I found this quite baffling. Now granted tempered glass is supposed to break in a way that prevents thos huge sharp edges from forming, but in the past, I had only seen the tiny pieces at point of impact when something broke the glass, and the rest sort of hung together in a “sheet” of broken pieces. In this case the entire tabletop was completely in chards. I did my best Gil Grissom imitation (other than taking photos… dammit), looking for a cause. There were no rocks, sticks, branches from a tree or other projectiles within the rubble. The ring that protects the center hold where the umbrella goes had fallen straight down and landed on the leg of the table, so obviously the table came straight down, and not at some angle. There was no blood to indicate that a squirrel or other animal had landed on it crashing through. I even entertained the notion that since I live in the flight path of Newark Liberty International Airport that it was a case of “blue ice” and that in the midday sun, it had just melted… but even that would have left some sort of residue from the dye (and or contained waste…ewww). No, nothing seemed to fit.

The table, was one I had purchased from K-Mart a couple of years ago, one of their Martha Stewart line of tables. I was talking about it this week to somebody, and decided to look up some information on Tempered Glass, and at first found this article discussing how when tempered glass is compromised in some way that it can seem like it just “explodes.” Back into Google for a search of “Tempered Glass Exploding” and there… the first article up (at least at the time I did the search), was this little piece called, “Sounds of Summer: Martha Stewart Tables Shattering.” Turns out, this “phenomenon” that had struck our table was not at all uncommon.

There is apparently even a class action lawsuit that is in the works against Martha Stewart Living Omnipedia and JRA Funiture.  However, JRA Funiture filed Chapter 7 Bakruptcy (total liquidation) last year, so at least they are no longer the source (depending on inventories of course) of the tables, but it also means no recovery for the Class Action Lawsuit either.

I’d like to think that with JRA Funiture out of business that this is the end of the situation, but to be honest, reading how Sears (and/or Kmart) and Martha Stewart Living have not even (so far as I can tell) acknowledged this as a problem, outside of saying they will work with consumers under warranty, leaves me a little ill at ease with them, leaving me doubting whether I want to trust them again.  Problem is, at least the old sets were also farmed out under different names to other chains as well.  JRA’s funiture was also sold under the Hampton Bay name at Home Depot, as well as being carried by Sam’s Club, Target and Safeway. (Only Home Depot has has a similar report of an exploding table that I have been able to find so far).

If you have (or had) one of these sets,  if your table is still under warranty you can call K-mart Customer Service about it at 866-562-7848 (though K-Mart has not specifically said they will honor the manufacturer’s warranty) or Home Depot (who will honor the warranty) at 800-585-9969.  Other than that you are probably out of luck.  So what does this all mean?  I guess, most of all be careful if you are going to buy a glass top patio set from a discount retailer.  In my case, I am thinking a nice teak set might be in our future instead of risking it with glass again.

Teaching her too well?

I could have sworn, I had talked about this before, but for the life of me, cannot find it in my archives. Oh, well… to summarize quickly… One thing we did very early with LatteGirl is start her on an allowance.

Now, to cover a couple of issues, I always see when the issue of allowance comes up. We GIVE her an allowance. We do not tie it to chores. Why? Because simply put, we do not provide her an “option” of whether or not she does the chores we ask of her. There is no, conversation like, “well if you don’t clean up your room, your not going to get your allowance.” which eventually (at least once) leads to the reply of “fine, keep you money” No. This is not acceptable, and hence we don’t connect them in such a way.

Now for those that argue, “Why should I pay them for breathing?” I can give you some other ways to look at it. First of course you can look at it as paying on installment the eventual therapy bills they will have as adults, and just consider this sort of a payment plan or savings account towards that. More seriously though, stop looking as it as paying them. Think of it in how much it can possibly save you. You are going to spend money on your kids anyway. This allows an easy to understand cap on some types of spending, as well as provides a way to teach financial responsibility.

We give LatteGirl $1 per week for every year. On other words she is 7 now, so she gets $7 per week, but after the end of the month when she turns 8 she will get a “cost of living” increase. With that money we have set up 3 banks for her and (approximately) a third goes in each. So right now, $2.50 goes towards her college fund (and gets put into her 529 plan every other month), $2.50 goes into her “saving up” fund. These are for larger toy purchases she wishes to make outside of what she gets for her birthday or Xmas. The final $2.50 is for her “instant gratification” fund that she can spend (almost) any way she wants. She wants to buy gum, a candy bar or to get something from the Ice Cream Man rather than the ice cream in the freezer? It all comes out of her money. She learns to balance the “I want” against, “is it worth it?” Yes, she has made a mistake or two along the way (but who hasn’t… I still make them), but by and large, these lessons have really seemed to sunk in.

Which brings me back to why I started this post. Perhaps, she is learning a bit too quickly (for me anyway). I have gone out of my way to avoid certain toys. Some are hard and fast rules that we do not allow (i.e. Bratz) but others are things that I am just sort of trying to stall on. One of those items is a Nintendo DS Lite. She has enjoyed the LeapFrog Leapster, and I get the bonus of not only is it entertaining her, but she is also learning something while she is playing it.

However, lately I noticed she has been a bit more frugal than usual (her only real expense this year was that she finally decided to get her ears pierced… but that is another post), and saving some of her “now” money with her long term. Upon inquiry I was informed that since Santa didn’t come across with the DS, and she already knows she is not getting one for her birthday (her request was for another addition to her American Girl Doll collection), that she was now saving to get one herself.  Between her allowance and a few dollars she got slipped to her from my mother (Aany money she gets in the manner gets split between her 529 Plan and her “long term” saving fund. Yes, we have this covered as well), but between her sources, she is already better than half way to her goal.  And of course, she was quick to point out, that since it is her money, she is entitled to do with it as she pleases since it does not break the “Bratz Rule.”

I am going to have to add an ammendment to these rules and find a way to give myself more veto power.  She is learning her way around these issues far quicker and easier than I ever imagined.  I never thought I would regret teaching her money management, but while I am thrilled that she has taken to learning this so well, I can see this coming back to bite me.

I think I am

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